The Bill Graham Guides Collection is now available!

Following an overwhelmingly successful fundraising drive in July to pay for the scanning, the Society for American Soccer History is pleased to announce the complete Bill Graham Guides Collection is now available for free download in PDF format.

Edited and compiled by legendary Scottish-born US soccer journalist  Bill Graham, the first edition was published in 1948 as the U.S. Annual Soccer Guide and Record: Season 1947-48 with Guide for 1948-49. Graham published eight further editions under various titles through 1956. In 1960, the United States Soccer Football Association revived the guide with Graham as editor. Graham edited a total of nine USSFA-published editions under various titles before retiring ahead of 1970 edition. After Graham’s retirement, Clive Toye, Dave Hirshey, Francisco Marcus and John McKeon edited subsequent editions through the final 1973 edition, the same year as Graham’s death. All told, 22 editions were published between 1948 and 1973, containing some 3,400 pages of historical records.

The Society extends its deep gratitude to the donors who made the Graham Guides Digitization Project possible. In making the Bill Graham Guides collection freely available, SASH hopes to spark scholarship in the period leading up to the soccer boom in the United States that began in the 1970s. The Society also hopes Bill Graham will receive the long overdue recognition he so richly deserves for his vital contributions to soccer in the United States over a  journalism and public relations career spanning five decades.

To view editions of the Guides for download, visit The Bill Graham Collection page.

For more on the history and significance of the Graham Guides, see “The ‘pocket-book size masterpiece’: A publishing history of the Graham Guides“ and “Guides to American soccer’s past.”